wfn.org | Israel and Palestine: A Message to Canadian Anglicans

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ACNS 2947 - CANADA - 8 April 2002

Israel and Palestine: A Message to Canadian Anglicans

from the Most Revd Michael Peers
Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada

5 April 2002

Over the past ten days, suicide bombings in Israel and armoured invasions in
the Occupied Territories have galvanized the attention of people around the
world. For some the impact has been limited to rising prices at the gas
pumps. For others these events have built to a crescendo of anxious
perplexity, as they try to find some sense in the tidal wave of images,
assertions, and interpretations that flood the airwaves and fill the
newspapers. Some see Israel as a nation under domestic threat from
terrorists. Others see the Palestinians as a people under threat from the
terror of the state of Israel. In the midst of the confusion, fear, and
violence that threaten to explode onto the world stage, I invite members of
the Anglican Church of Canada to take seriously the biblical call to peace
with justice.

That call is not a new one. It is rooted in the experience of our Hebrew
ancestors: in the God who defied the slavers of Egypt to liberate the Hebrew
people; in the stern proclamation of the Hebrew prophets whose witness to
God's justice remains fresh and topical in the maelstrom of terror and
counter-terror that seems to define our world; in tragic encounter of Jesus
with those in authority, an encounter that led to his death by torture. But
for people of faith, the call to peace with justice is rooted most deeply in
a promise. For Christians in the Western traditions, that promise has been
the focus of recent days, as we have celebrated the Easter power of God to
overturn the outcomes of the unjust, to bring new life in the face of death,
to restore communion where communion has been shattered, to refresh earth's
bruised history through the power of the Love that brought earth into being.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are not simply the events of the past.
They are the dynamic of the present and the promise of the future.

This tradition of peace with justice, of cooperating with God in a mission
that seeks the world's healing, prompts the Anglican Church of Canada to
bear witness to the struggles of persons, communities, and peoples for a
sustainable and peaceable life. It is a tradition we share with our
Christian partners throughout the world. We stand with the Palestinian
people in their struggle for justice because that is God's call to us. In
doing so, we do not stand against our sisters and brothers in Israel, who
share with us the covenant of Abraham, the liberation that God worked
through Moses, Aaron and Miriam, and the promise of a peaceable kingdom.
Indeed, together with them, we stand against a world driven by hate, fear,
and violence.

The history of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people is
complicated by the actions of governments over the past century and more.
The British promise in 1916 of a Palestinian state has not been fulfilled.
The principles by which partition was to have proceeded, brought forward in
1947 by the United Nations, have not been realized. The uprooting of
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948-49 and again in the wake of
the 1967 war, and the legacy of despair that has resulted for their
descendents, is a deep offence against God's justice.

What has emerged instead is a state, Israel, whose armed forces are
experienced by many as an instrument of terror, and a people, the
Palestinians, whose desperation has led increasingly to acts of violence
that have themselves offended against God's justice and created obstacles to
peace. Tragically, in all this, what has been overlooked is the overwhelming
majority of Palestinians whose struggle for peace has been humane, and the
many Israelis whose quest for peace is undermined by the distorted assertion
that the only path to peace is littered with the bodies of the innocent.
Attacks against civilians, in Hebron or Jerusalem, by the state or by a
suicide bomber, cannot lead to peace.

Since 1967, Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian territories in the
West Bank and Gaza. In the wake of the Israeli war of independence in
1947-49, the homes, orchards and settlements of Palestinians became the
spoils of war. The right of Palestinians to return to their lives in those
places has not been recognized by the State of Israel, and the territories
annexed have not been returned.

Moreover, in the current hostilities, the besieged enclaves of Palestinians
have been prevented from receiving humanitarian aid. Ambulances have been
turned away, health care workers have been harassed, homes have been
destroyed, and the streets are filled with death and death's servants.
Terror in Jerusalem feeds terror in Ramallah. Terror in Beit Jala feeds
terror in Tel Aviv. Fear cannot cast out fear, and violence cannot bring an
end to violence.

Our church's response to these events, some of them recent, some of them
almost fifty years old, has taken three forms. The first, partnership,
brings us into solidarity with the yearning of fellow-Anglicans and
fellow-Christians in Israel and in the occupied territories. The Anglican
Bishop in Jerusalem, Bishop Riah, is among our partners in the Episcopal
Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. St. George's College in Jerusalem
is a ministry of the Anglican Communion at which a number of Canadian clergy
and lay people have served. These are the flesh-and-blood brothers and
sisters who serve Christ in the midst of violence and terror. They are part
of the household we share with one another, and with God in Christ. In the
Anglican Communion, and in the ecumenical church, there is no "us" and
"them". Their life is bound up with ours in the unity of the Body of Christ.

The second, prayer, makes clear our conviction that people are not simply
fodder for history, but partners with the God who creates history, fosters
its freedom, redeems its folly, and works without ceasing for its healing.
In prayer, we reach out to welcome God's grace and God's way, to stand in a
relationship with God that encourages and strengthens us to stand in
relationship with our sisters and brothers.

The third, advocacy, joins our identity as citizens to our identity as
people of partnership and prayer in the Anglican Communion. Throughout the
communion, such advocacy takes different forms in different circumstances.
For Bishop Riah in Jerusalem, advocacy is immediate. With other Christian
leaders from the other traditions that make up the Middle East Council of
Churches, he has gone to Bethlehem as a witness to peace with justice. In
the midst of great violence, he has acted not only with the courage of his
convictions, but with the physical courage by which he is able to stand
firmly in the tradition of Jesus and the prophets.

In the Anglican Church of Canada, advocacy has largely taken the form of
bearing witness to governments and other leaders, and expressing publicly
the call of our faith to peace with justice. The actions of General Synod
and its councils, and of the House of Bishops, have taken up this tradition
of advocacy. Reading through the record of that advocacy from 1967 to the
present, I recognize the names of leaders - lay and ordained - who have
called the church to understanding and action. And I recognize that,
throughout that record, there is a consistent theme: that as citizens who
are also people of faith, we have a responsibility to engage in public
witness - to government, to public leaders, to our neighbours. Perhaps as
important as the witness beyond our walls, however, is the witness within
them. A recurring theme in the record of our advocacy has been the call to
our own members to prayer and to a renewed sense of partnership with those
who are put at risk by the violence or oppression of others.

This week, I wrote the following, in a letter to the Editor of the National
Post:

The current violence in Palestine has deep roots, but Israeli occupation of
Palestinian territory in defiance of United Nations resolutions is at its
heart. The Anglican Communion has, since 1948, expressed concern for peace
in Palestine, and the Anglican Church of Canada has expressed a similar
concern in resolutions of General Synod. The United Nations, beginning with
Resolution 194 in 1948, has been consistent in calling for justice for all
the residents of Palestine. These resolutions challenge, not sovereignty of
the state of Israel, but the use of the power of that state to uproot the
Palestinian people. Our church and our tradition abhor violence. But peace
without justice is as much a tragic illusion now as it was in the time of
the prophet Jeremiah: "They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace." (Jeremiah 6.14)

When Israel withdraws from its illegal occupation of Palestine, when
Palestinians are free to return in peace to their homeland, when civilians
are no longer the targets of terror, either for suicide bombers or
government tanks, then healing will begin. Any other path will simply
entrench violence and death as the norm for this generation and many
generations to come.

I believe that peace can be achieved, and I invite you to pray for that end.
I believe that our partnership with other Anglicans, Christians, and people
of faith can be one of the instruments by which God works for that peace.
And I believe that justice can be our goal, for Palestinians and for
Israelis. We do not choose which of God's people we will love; we choose the
God who loves. I believe that the God who loves, who is revealed in Jesus
Christ, requires us to speak truth to power, and to advocate just solutions
that will bring lasting peace. I invite you to bring your love, your work,
and your prayers to the churches where you gather, and to the world in which
you serve.

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